If I told you W.C. Handy’s classic “St. Louis Blues” was the most influential blues song ever recorded, would you believe me? Possibly not. You may well be thinking of an important blues by Big Bill Broonzy, Willie Dixon, or even Cream, a song that brought blues to the masses. However, my case is pretty…

I was recently told, by an American who’d read America’s Gift, how astounded he was at how little he knew about the history of his country’s music. And he was a big blues fan. “America’s Gift should be taught in schools,” he said. “But it won’t be, because there’s too much in it (America’s Gift)…

  It’s astounding just how many assumptions there are about the evolution of the blues. I remember Van Morrison saying recently that “some people think the blues started with Jimi Hendrix”. Others think blues started in the 1950s with the emergence of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and company. Talking of John Lee Hooker, I…

  I’ve just made a short film using a superb 1928 guitar duet as the soundtrack. It’s by Lonnie Johnson and jazz guitar pioneer Eddie Lang, who died prematurely five years later aged just 31. There’s more about Eddie in my book America’s Gift. Eddie Lang is playing rhythm guitar and the wonderful single string…

George Barnes, anyone? I bet only the most hardcore blues and jazz enthusiasts know of that sublime electric guitarist George Barnes. This isn’t just sad, it’s a travesty. George was recorded eight years before Muddy, before Buddy (Guy – not Holly), before even Howlin’ Wolf – in those days before the electric blues-style of guitar-playing we know…